Street

Carmen Leone examined a topic close to his heart, and storytelling gifts made it a story that is now close to mine.

My own grandparents came to Ohio around 1900. "Rose Street" brought to narrative life all the stories my father, uncles and aunts have told me over the years.

I wonder if Carmen Leone realized that by telling his story, he was telling mine, too, as well as the stories of countless others. They might Italian, but they don't have to be. In fact, the soundtrack that came to my head while reading "RoseStreet" was the song "Tradition," from "Fiddler On The Roof." How can the story of an Italian immigrant couple and their American-born children have anything to do with Jewish shtetl life?

Read the book.

Ever look in the mirror and just examine your own eyes. Ever see the faces of your relatives in your own?

"Rose Street" is, too, such a mirror.

Capturing the true essence of what it means to be of Italian-American descent and from Youngstown, Ohio, the author paints a richly moving accout of family life during the first half of the twentieth century. Through laughter and tears, I read about Jo, the protagonist whose faith and strenghth never fail. This "universal" story played out in many of the homes on Rose Street or on Dearborn Street where my family history began. We learn from Jo and from our grandparents that the struggle to preserve our family and its heritage provides riches a banker can never count. Their experiences so move and inspire us to hold dear all that is truly important: love, loyalty and a true committment to family.

Carmen Leone works magic in Rose Street. He captures the specifics of his Italian-American family's experience in Youngstown, Ohio with remarkable clarity while simultaneously tapping into themes which remain universal to the family dynamic: responsibility, authority, self-sacrifice, love. The story of his immigrant mother's daily struggles and triumphs offers us insight into the core of our humanness. Originally written as a gift for Leone's own family, Rose Street inspires us to treat ours with a little more tenderness.

The kidnapping of Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann by the Israeli Mossad was one of it's most known coups of the 1960's. Eichnmann was one of Nazi Germany's most notorious war criminals, who was personally responsible for the killing of millions of Jews in occupied Europe. This book brings the story of Isser Harel, Israel's legendary intelligence spymaster who was Head of the Mossad at the time of the operation. Harel's story of this complex action is told in a simple and moving way. The editor Shlomo Shpiro, an Israeli intelligence expert, places in his detailed introduction the operation in its overall historical contex. The new books contains, for the first time, the real names of all Mossad personnel involved, as well as the astounding facts about the involvement of West Germany in this operation. A must reading not only to those interested in the hunt for Nazi criminals but also to everyone interested in real, as opposed to fictional, intelligence work.

This book is a must read for those who are fasinated by the shadowy world of espionage. A magnificant account of the capture of the nazi war criminal Adolf Eichman, by the Mossad. Written by the chief Israeli spy master, Isser Harel, it is an in depth discription of how Eichman was found, tracked, captured, smuggled out of Argentina, and brought to trial. Get your hands on this book, it is truely amazing.

Frederick Forsyth, Ken Follett and Robert Ludlum all together couldn't think up a story as amazing as this one. THE HOUSE ON GARIBALDI STREET is called a "Classic of Espionage" and it is. Isser Harel, the Chief of the Israeli Secret Services recounts in detail the amazing capture of Adolf Eichmann, "The Man In The Glass Booth" who was Hitler's senior functionary in creating and carrying out the "Final Solution" and one of the prime creators of the Holocaust.

Eichmann, whose policies and personal behavior condemned six million human beings to death, was captured by Israeli agents, tried in a Court of law, and executed---the only person ever put to death by Judicial process in Israel. Hiding in Argentina under an assumed name, he was eventually caught through a combination of complacency (his family began to use their real name), bizarre coincidence (a neighborhood blind man acted as the informant after his daughter dated Eichmann's son), luck (Eichmann never caught on that he had been discovered), and incredibly hard work (the Israelis painstakingly traced him and tracked him down).

This is true espionage, so real it reads like a novel. Far and away the most taut tale ever written---because it's true.

If you've seen stray dogs in your city and wondered how they live, how they became homeless, and what finally happens to them, this book will tell you. This is the story of dogs on the street and one man who has dedicated his life to saving them.

Randy Grim works every day with homeless dogs in the St. Louis metro area. These are dogs that were once pets, now abandoned by their owners. Or, they were born on the streets and have never known a safe and loving home. By the time Randy finds them in abandoned city warehouses and on busy streets, they have little faith in humans. It is his seemingly impossible job to convince them to trust again. He acclimates them to human behavior so that they can be adopted by responsible families. Randy's non-profit organization, Stray Rescue of St. Louis, is dedicated to saving the lives of dogs on the street.

This is a story of heartbreak and hope. It is the story of dogs who were brutalized and who come to trust again. When we see how Randy's patient work can turn around even the most distrustful dog, we can celebrate that special bond that exists between man and animal. It will make many animal lovers sad because it details struggles of dogs on the street. But it will also serve as inspiration to show the rest of us what can be done!

A fascinating account of one man's crusade to rescue the stray dogs of St. Louis, this book gives us incredible insight into the issues surrounding the stray animal problem in this country. I learned more than I knew there was to know about feral dogs and their place in our society. But this book is not just about dogs - the lessons learned could just as easily be applied to the "capture" and "saving" of all the other strays found in our cities--including those lost & homeless children who have become so commonplace. The behaviors they exhibit are scarily similar to those described by Randy Grim in this book. A gripping tale and one which should be read by anyone interested in the plight of all the strays of the world.

Mr. Grim is a living saint in the mold of Brother Francis. If you believe that a dog dumped by someone who doesn't want him anymore will end up wild and free like a wolf . . . if you think neutering your dog will somehow affect your own manhood . . . if you think your dog should have "just one litter" because "the kids should see the miracle of birth" . . . read this book and then try to sleep at night. Dogs are not wolves in Snoopy costumes, able to return to the wild at a moment's notice. Dumped dogs die slow and terrible deaths, and dogs born on the street live short and wretched lives. They need us. They can't survive without us. Our ancestors made them that way, and passed on to us the responsibility for their life and death. Randy Grim knows this in his guts.

Read this book, and when you stop shivering, call your local animal shelter and ask them what they need most. And if you see a dog wandering alone, look into its eyes. You'll know what I mean when you're done with The Man who Talks to Dogs.

This is a beautiful little book which captures perfectly a moment of music history.

Springsteen's 78 tour is widely regarded as one of the seminal moments of his career. Coming of the back of Born to Run, the settled courtcase with his ex-managers and the Darkness album, Springsteen undertook a triumphant tour accross America, playing 1,000 to 5,000 seater concert halls.

This tour was a pure celebration of rock n'roll and Lynn Goldsmith's unrivalled access (she was Bruce's girlfriend at the time) allowed her to record it for posterity.

The concert shots capture the excitement of the shows perfectly, the sweat pouring off the performers, Bruce's mock collapse, the interaction with the audience. I've seen bootleg videos and heard many tapes from the tour but I have to say that Lynn Goldsmith's book captures the excitment of being in the crowd at one of those concerts better than any medium I have seen.

But this is more than a collection of superb concert photos, it also captures the quieter moments backstage both pre and post show (including the infamous Bruce shower shot!) Shots of the band eating breakfast, Bruce writing etc.

This book is pricey but will definately appeal to all Bruce fans and admirers of outstanding photojournalism.

There is no question that Lynn Goldsmith does what professional portrait photographers do: capture on film the essence of the person. A very difficult objective that only a few do well. Her book "Photodiaries" documents her portrait work with popular musical artists from the seventies to the nineties and places her work alongside that of Annie Liebowitz in creating the memorable images of our popular music culture. What wonderful fate that she also happened to be the girlfriend of Bruce Springsteen during the 1978 Darkness on the Edge of Town tour. This was an important time for those who beleive that Springsteen writes and performs music that describes a truth in our individual lives and our communities. In 1978, he had not yet "conquered the world". Unlike the years that followed, the audience was not expecting a phenomenal performance, so the concerts were a shock to most. Bruce and the E Street Band were hungry to prove it all night, every night. "All Areas Access" captures the incredible energy of the stage peformance and the reaction of the lucky audiences. My favorite image is of Clarence, Bruce, Gary and Little Steven all in the air and there is no doubt that they are bringing a rocker home one-tenth of a second later. Then the book goes farther. It captures the quiet moments of an artist creating, looking for inspiration, crafting a song, spending a moment with a friend, and of the artist completed exhausted from a peformance. If the music of Bruce Springsteen speaks to you, then this book will illuminate a special time in the life of the artist, the music, and quite possibly yourself.

Lynn Goldsmith's Springsteen Access All Areas is a photodiary of his 1978 Darkness On The Edge Of Town tour. The photos are all in black and white and they perfectly capture the spirit of Bruce Springsteen. Ms. Goldsmith was Mr. Springsteen's girlfriend at the time and she uses that cache to give us glimpses of the man and his band that other photographers may never have been able to get. For those of you old enough to remember or even attend a show at the tour, this book will bring you back to that time and for those of us who were too young to know, it provides us with a look at an artist establishing himself as an icon.

I found the information in this book very informative and surprising that black participation in finance went back as far as it did. Stories of black stockbrokers and mutual fund salesmen in the 1950's to the investment bankers of today, records the slow but meaningful progress made on the Street in the last few decades. Hopefully, the progress will continue....

This book was an impulse buy for me, I have always had little interest in Wall Street but my son works in the securities industry so I thought I would read this for some background. I am very glad I did because I did not realize how deep African American history in the financial world is. I enjoyed the stories of people like Philip Jenkins and John Patterson, early pioneers who deserve greater recognition for their contributions. I think that this book is an important contribution of both African American and Wall Street history and does a good job of illuminating aspects about the history of finance that went unrecognized for far too long.

This book fills in the missing pages of Wall Street's History. It documents how African-Americans overcame racism and other barriers to become successful in the financial securities industry. This should be part of every business school's curriculum.

A very well researched book, by a knowledgeable author. A few things were out of date, but with the fluidity of gangs, turf wars, etc. that can be expected. More books should be available for people to inform themselves, like this one.

Sach's book has been used here at our local high school for the last several years, when one of the city's juvenile probation officer brought it to identify a piece of school graffiti. Bought several copies for the teacher's lounge / library. A welcomed addition! Great illustrations, author knows his gangs. Excellent chapter written just for schools----includes an assessment tool to evaluate gang infiltration within your own school. Would highly recommend for anyone who comes into contact with gangs.

This heavily illustrated book strips away the secrets that street gangs have enjoyed for so long. I have worked as a field officer for a mid-city probation department for 12 years and I have yet to find as a complete book on gangs and what police, parents, teachers, correctional officers, and probation officers should look for to determine if a young person is involved with gangs. This is a "hands on" book that goes into detail on gang symbols, slang, colors, sports team affiliations, grafitti (and how to read it) etc. This book also illustrates what communities, parents, and schools can do to combat the gang problem. As a probation officer I often refer to the book during the course of my job. I also have bought several other copies to loan out to parents and schools (to loan to parents), and so far, the book has proved to be a big help. It doesn't dwell in gang theory but seems to be written as though Mr. Sachs was in the room with you, having a conversation. I'm surprised a book like this hasn't been written before. Chapter 13 has 16 steps that parents can do on the homefront, and is worth the price of the book alone. Street Gang Awareness should be in every school, police department and library.

I stopped at Gay St on my way home from vacation. It was like a vacant movie set. Stepping onto the street, I instantly imagined all of the characters in "Gay Street." Jack Mauro's close attention to the fine detail of a character conjurs up instant images of the peculiar and ordinary characters in this book. The stories are funny, as well as dramatic and ordinary. An entertaining book.

I spent the first 30 years of my life in Knoxville, so when Mauro mentions buying something on Market Street I remember the old Market House with its smells of fresh blood at the butcher's, sawdust and lilacs by the flower stalls. In my mind I see the row of farmer's dilapidated trucks parked alongside with their wooden boxes of fruits and vegetables fresh from the mountain truck farms -- bright green spinach and crisp green beans, sunny yellow squash and crimson strawberries.

He mentions Cherokee Hills and I remember Cherokee Boulevard in Sequoyah Hills, where I grew up. At his reference to the S&W Cafeteria I think of Lois Harris playing the organ there on Thursday nights, and the Disney cartoons they showed for the children after dinner.

So this book is really two books for me. Mauro speaks of Knoxville of the 1980s and 1990s and makes me remember the Knoxville from 1940s to 1970s. So how could I not like the book?

Krutch Park didn't exist when I lived there, but I was born on Clinch Avenue at Fort Sanders Hospital. He mentions Highland Avenue and I remember that James Agee lived there even before my time and in the 1960s Hollywood came to town to make a movie of his book, DEATH IN THE FAMILY, starring Robert Preston.

I think this is the first time I've ever seen a book I could barely read for the memories it prompts. I'm amused by the story of a young couple haunted by questions about a past they could never know -- 1952. It was that year and near that place when my date and I were returning to the parking lot from a movie at the Tennessee Theater one warm summer night and heard a woman scream. Could it have been...???

The World's Fair, the YMCA, the Bijou Theater, Gay and State Streets -- places in these stories that revive more memories from the Knoxville I knew.

Needless to say, reading this delightful look at contemporary Knoxville was not only a joy from the average reader's point of view, it was a trip into nostalgia. Mauro captures the new city and yet is able, at the same time, to retrieve the old for those who knew it.

Like Jack Mauro, my husband was born in New Jersey and fell in love with Knoxville when he came there as a young graduate student at UT. There is something magic about that place, and Mauro has done a fine job of putting some of that magic on the page.

Ruth Fulton Tiedemann

Jack Mauro's writing style is always a pleasure. It's smooth and consistent, his stories are engaging, and his characters are a delight. I highly recommend this one and, after reading "Gay Street", I'm now looking forward to sinking into "Spite Hall".

Endless hours I spent just reading just watching the time fly by! This book kept me on my toes for the week it took to read it. Every chapter ends with something new revealed so I just could not stop! A girl meets this new boy that came to their school and instantly falls in love. But then a murder occurs. He is suspected and she has mixed feelings. With twists and turns and not being to difficult to read I would recommend this story to anyone intrested in murder mysteries. A few times though I caught the author repeating himself and making too many twists and turns which left me spinning. Take time to read it though. You'll never guess how it ends.

The New Boy by R.L.Stine is one of the best books I have ever read. I would definetly recomend this book to anyone who loves mystery books. This book is filled with thrills and suspense. The book starts of talking about a mysterious boy named Ross coming to ShadyHigh. But when he catches the eye of Jannie and her friends the soon try to go out with him. When Jannie hears about an incident that happened with Ross and his ex-girlfriend Jannie decides to do some investigating.

The New Boy is scary and surprising. It shows that just because a guy is creepy, don't suspect him of being a killer.
The book is about Janie and her friends start to get married and they suspect that Ross is doing it. Read to find out!

If I could I'd give this book a 11! Now I have said before that other books were the best, but this one was really the best. I started reading it the night I got it and I told myself I was going to bed after chapter 5, but after that chapter I was hooked, I just couldn't put it down. After every chapter I told myself I was going to bed, but I would always tell myself, "just one more chapter", until the whole book was read . That was the fastest time I've ever read a book. It only took me 2 hours, then I finally went to bed! You must read this book, cause it really is the best!!

Have you ever heard of a girl with telekinetic powers? Well in the book Runaway a girl named Felicia has powers to move things with her mind. One problem, she couldn't control her powers. So she became a runaway. After he escaped all the tests people were doing on her she went to a town called Shadyside. There she met a boy called Nick and his girlfriend Zan, short for Alexandria. Felicia became runaway because at her old town she killed two people. Zan found out about her secret and tried to kill her. Next her friend Debbie tried to kill her. Do you think she think survived?
While I was reading the book, I was on the edge of my seat. Everyday I read two to four chapters. When I was reading the book I pictured I was in the book watching everything. Everyday when I was in school I couldn't wait until my study hall so I could read the book. One weekend I stayed up from 9:00pm to 1:00am finishing the book. I absolutely could not put the book down. The book had so much action and excitement. That is what I look for in a book.
Felicia, the protagonist, is tall, slender, brown eyes, and long brown hair. Her personality traits are nice, caring, helpful, concerned, generous and courageous. She showed she was helpful by helping out at the Burger Basket. She showed she was courageous when the Burger Basket started on fire and people were still trapped inside the building. She went inside and cleared the fire with her telekinetic powers. She has a couple of strengths and weaknesses. Her strengths are that she has telekinetic powers. Her weaknesses are that she cannot control them. They just go off when ever they feel like it. An example is when she was in school, she felt the powers swell inside of her, then they just burst out and a row of lockers began to tremble and books began to slam against the lockers.
Felicia seems like a nice girl. She seems she would help out no matter what the situation. She acted strange a few times but people got used to it, except for Zan. It seems like she had a lot of adventures. This was a good book, I hope you read it.

I realy enjoyed the runaway. last sunday i was coming home from florida and read 8 chapters. I would of read all of it but i slept instead. Then the next morning i read the book in 2 hours which is the fastest ive ever read a fear street. I have a hard time reading books usualy but this one realy interested me so it was alot easier. This was with out a doubht one of rl's finest.

I found the character of Harvey Milk fascinating. This was the story not only of Mr. Milks ascendency in the political world, but the development of the San Francisco gay community. Randy Shilts writes with sensitivity and understanding for both sides of any issue. The book ends in the early 1980's and it would be interesting to read an afterword or an update by somebody, even if it cannot be Randy Shilts.

In The Mayor of Castro Street, the late Randy Shilts paints a vivid picture, not only of the life of gay politician Harvey Milk, but of the fight for gay rights in 1970's San Francisco and the nation as a whole. After a description of the events immediately following Milk's death, Shilts begins the book with Milk's youth in New York City. He briefly describes Milk's years in New York, and spends the vast majority of the book on Milk's last five years in San Francisco. It was during his San Francisco years that Milk made his critical contributions to gay history, including encouraging the development of the Castro into a gay Mecca, and running for, and finally winning, elected office as an openly gay man in a time when most thought such things simply couldn't happen.

Shilts is a meticulous reporter. In his section on source material he details how he extensively interviewed Milk's former lovers, including Scott Smith and Joe Campbell. Many of the dialogues for the biography come directly from the personal diary of Michael Wong, a longtime Milk supporter. According to Shilts, dialogues with others who knew Milk virtually always corroborated those in Wong's diary. Shilts's history of the Castro area came from over one hundred interviews he conducted with area residents.

One of the best qualities of the biography is its astonishingly objective posture. Achieving something like objectivity is a tremendous challenge for the author of any modern-day history, and nowhere is this more true than in histories of the gay liberation movement. The living participants in that history inevitably portray it in a range of ways and often fight vigorously for placement of credit where they feel credit is due. Shilts allows those participants to speak for themselves, and focuses on telling the details of the story, rather than interpreting that story for the reader. It is this author's unique degree of commitment to researching and conveying all the details that allows him to present such an apparently unbiased account.

It is also Shilts's attention to detail that makes the book so tough to put down. It reads more like a novel than a history, and each segment leads into the next with a sense of a tremendous plot unfolding. In a style that would come to characterize his later books, such as And The Band Played On, as well as Conduct Unbecoming, Shilts manages to draw the reader into multiple stories of individuals that end in cliffhangers, only to be picked up again in a later chapter. It is these stories that make up the fabric of gay history in San Francisco and a portion of that larger tapestry called gay liberation.

Randy Shilts's intricately researched biography of one of the greatest gay activists of all time, Harvey Milk, is not only a political biography, but a chronology of an entire political movement.
This is the second book I've read by Randy Shilts, the first being And the Band Played On. While there are certainly some differences between the two, Shilts's imaginative narrative writing is the same. The Mayor of Castro Street is proof positive that he [the author] can turn even the most mundane of political machinations into high drama.
Starting out when Harvey Milk was growing up in Woodmere, New York, the book traces his life from there. From his high school athletic career, to his college years, his time with the Navy, and his Manhattan years. When Harvey makes the move from New York to San Francisco, the book changes pace, and a gay political hero is born. The book is filled with snippets of his speeches, and in the back appendices, the eloquent words of Harvey Milk come alive, as some of his more famous speeches are reprinted there.
At a solid 380 pages (including appendices and sources) the book never drags. Everything appears to be cause and effect, which makes for some white-knuckle reading even if the reader is already familiar with the budding gay movement, Harvey Milk's participation in it, and the untimely tragic assassination of he and Mayor George Moscone by a homophobic zealot.
I must admit, there were certain parts of this book that gave me chills: Harvey Milk's beautiful speeches, the candlelight vigils, the many marches, and the White Night Riots. The sheer epic proportions of it all can overwhelming.
However, epic or not, this remains the simple story of a man and his dream, vision, and hope for his gay brothers and sisters, and all of humanity.